Statism in Sheep's Clothing

A friend who knows my passion for classical education recently asked what I think of the Great Hearts Academies in the Phoenix area. To paraphrase Gollum, "We hates 'em!"

This is a network of six charter schools (they threaten to add five more), that have provided interested families in the Phoenix area a prep school education (and an authentically rigorous one, as their test scores attest) as tuition-free charter schools. Their rhetoric mixes traditional prep school academic values with the heritage of the Great Books schools like St. John's College and the American idealism of places like the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Free Enterprise Institute. They also incorporate phraseology (truth, beauty, goodness) and reading lists (the Omnibus) that were popularized in the past twenty years by the classical Christian school movement with which I have been associated.

So why shouldn't I welcome them as comrades-in-arms in the quest to halt the academic decline and fall of American education? Well, in a very narrow sense, I do. As a proponent of school choice, I welcome any diversion that forces American parents to make some kind of thoughtful choice for their children's education, as opposed to aimlessly wandering down the street in search of a yellow bus.

But I sincerely hope that as increased choices are forced into the awareness of parents, they will begin to ask more quality questions. I hope they will move from "How much does it cost?" or "Is transportation provided?" or "Are the teachers certified? (whatever that means)?" to "Will my child be taught the fear of the Lord?" or "What is your philosophy of the nature of the child?" or "What do you believe the end goal of education to be?"

It is precisely because of the different possible answers to these questions (which really matter), that I hope sincere Muslims will choose consistent Muslim education; sincere Jews will choose quality Jewish education; sincere Christians will choose authentic Christian education; and naturalistic humanists will choose...oh, maybe the Great Hearts Academies.

All attempts at education must have a means of dealing with fundamental philosophical questions. How those questions are dealt with is more impactful than how the schools actually label themselves. A school labelled "Christian," for example, which provides naturalistic answers to the basic questions above (and there have been some, I'm afraid), is not worth its salt and should be brought down.

In other words, how a school treats learners is more impactful than what is says it believes about the nature of a learner. The logical outcomes toward which the method of education propels the students is more important than what the school says its goals are. What the intructors demonstrate daily about their fear of God (or lack thereof) is more formative than what the school literature says about what it teaches or doesn't teach about fear of God.

However - and this is the real problem - this is not a two-way street. While a Muslim, Jewish, or Christian school may fail at effectively inculcating the worldview espoused by its founders, a state school (public or charter) can never "accidentally" espouse Muslim presuppositions, or inculcate Jewish outlooks, or replicate Christian behavior. All charter school charters incessantly cry out, "Non-sectarian!" But at their roots, those three worldviews have non-negotiable identities grounded in propositional assertions which can be debated, analyzed, or replicated; whole civilizations and cultures have been built on these presuppositions!

When Christian schools fail to faithfully inculcate Christian worldview and practice in our schools, it is usually because our teachers were educated in and by the same presuppositions of naturalistic humanism that most eveyone else in this nation was nurtured in. But students coming out of state-controlled schools don't just "happen" to come out thinking and acting with Christian presuppositions. They may achieve such integration in spite of having been subjected to statist education, but according to pollsters like George Barna, it is an exceedingly rare phenomenon, and according the research of the Nehemiah Institute, it is becoming rarer by the day. But because God is sovereign and Aslan is not a tame lion, when such graduates do exist, the first thing they will do is put their own children in a Christian school or homeschool them.

Ironically, the Great Hearts Academies tout the outstanding "moral formation" of their approach (which means "we can be good without God") and one of them is actually named Veritas (Latin for truth - but which truth?). As for the type of truth taught at Veritas, I can tell you all about it, even though I have never been there. I can guarantee it is a multi-cultural, relativistic, negotiable truth - certainly not the truth revealed in John 14:6. How can I be so sure? Because I know where their money comes from.

Unfortunately many who believe themselves to be Christians will not be so discerning, and will embrace the Great Hearts Academies as their child's educational "savior."

And that's why "we hates 'em."